The Queen Wants Kate Middleton to Wear Longer Skirts

First, Kate and Will’s press operations were taken away. And now, it would seem, their sartorial freedoms (well, Kate’s, at least) have also been curbed from on high. Royal correspondent Katie Nicholl reports in the Mail on Sunday that the Queen has issued some dictums as to how Kate should be dressed when she tours Australia in April. The upshot? The hemlines will be longer, the jewelry will be statement-ier, and there will be more tiaras than you’d find at a Miss Texas Teen U.S.A. pageant.

In order to execute this “subtle but significant regal makeover,” as the Mail calls it, the Queen has charged her personal dresser, Angela Kelly, with helping to prepare Kate for the trip. The overhaul will see Kate wearing couture daytime dresses with “lower hemlines” than she typically goes for. Additionally, she will be “encouraged to wear the tiaras favored by the Queen and Queen Mother,” and will also be urged to wear “statement jewelry and gemstones from the Queen’s personal collection.” The idea here is said to be positioning Kate—currently vacationing in the Caribbean, sans William, with baby George—as “more Royal than ever,” with the “Queen . . . watching closely” (nothing about that wording sounds creepy at all!).

Thankfully, Kate seems to still have some input in what she wears, as she is said to have already approached preferred designers Alexander McQueen and Alice Temperley about creating gowns and dresses for the three-and-a-half-week trip. Additionally, her personal hairdresser, Amanda Cook Tucker, will reportedly be accompanying her on the tour. Tucker has recently “undergone training in the art of attaching a tiara” (a class we would assume is comprised almost exclusively of pop stars and six-year-olds). Listen, Queen, we can deal with the lower hemlines and tiara-palooza, we suppose, but if you come for her ringlets, you’re going to have the forces of the entire VF.com staff to answer to.